The US is to seize four mosques from a charity foundation suspectedof having ties with Iran, including this one in Houston, Texas.

US federal prosecutors have taken legal action to seize four mosques from a charity foundation, saying they are suspected of having ties with the Tehran government.

The prosecutors are also planning to seize the non-profit group's 36-story building on Fifth Avenue in New York.

The seizure of the places of worship is seen as a blow to the very first amendment to the United States Constitution in which freedom of worship is enshrined and guaranteed as an inalienable right of all its citizens.

On Thursday, the US President, Barack Obama, renewed Washington's economic sanctions against Iran for another year despite talks of trying to seek a 'new beginning' with the Islamic Republic.

"Our relations with Iran have not yet returned to normal," the US President said.

The US sanctions are engineered to mount pressure on Iran in an attempt to halt its nuclear program.

Tehran has repeatedly declared that it will not give up the Iranian nation's legitimate nuclear rights under Western pressure.

Iran has been under US sanction since the 1979 Islamic Revolution toppled the country's US-backed monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.